Eira Tansey

Online Course, August 1-5: Archives and Climate Change

Hello friends! I’m honored to teach a course on Archives and Climate Change this summer via California Rare Book School. I would love to see a wide variety of applicants for the course. California Rare Book School is offering scholarships for course applicants, and the scholarship deadline is May 1.

Here are all the details, as well as a preview of the syllabus! Contact me with any questions, especially if you would like more details about what we’re covering each day.

Details

Course title: Archives and Climate Change. Course page: https://www.calrbs.org/program/courses/archives-and-climate-change/

Dates and Times: Monday August 1-Friday August 5, 2022. Synchronous lectures/class discussions/workshops will take place between 10 AM and 3:30 PM Eastern, with asynchronous readings/activities to be completed before/after each day’s live session.

Location: Online, via Zoom.

Registration: Course registration deadline is June 1. Course applications: https://www.calrbs.org/admissions/

Scholarships: Scholarship deadline is May 1. Tuition is $1200, and a scholarship award provides a tuition waiver for one CalRBS course. Scholarship information: https://www.calrbs.org/scholarships/  

Description: Climate change is one of the greatest contemporary threats to archives. Increasingly severe disasters like hurricanes, floods, storms, and wildfires pose immediate dangers. Longer-term trends such as migration and rising sea levels may necessitate decisions concerning the geographic relocation of archives. Archivists and cultural heritage professionals, regardless of where they are located, should understand the threats related to climate change and how it impacts our work and cultural heritage institutions.  Participants in this course will: 

  1. Learn about the basic science behind climate change  
  2. Explore political governance challenges related to mitigation and adaptation
  3. Develop personalized strategies for addressing climate grief and anxiety
  4. Assess how climate change impacts their local region and institutions
  5. Explore how climate change impacts archives and cultural heritage institutions, both in the short and long-term
  6. Develop skills in using simple climate change data visualization and mapping tools

Syllabus Preview

Privacy and Sharing Policy

Climate change can be an overwhelming topic to grapple with, and has the capacity to surface a variety of intense emotions. In order to cultivate a safe community during our week together, participants will be expected to uphold the privacy rights of all participants within the course.

  • Do not share any written or spoken material by any classmates.
  • Do not post any screen captures of asynchronous or synchronous portions of this course.
  • If you choose to share publicly about the course experience (for example, on social media, a blog, or another public forum), keep the focus on your own personal experience and what you learned, rather than discussing the contributions and backgrounds of other participants. The libraries/archives/cultural heritage sector is a small world, and even attempts to anonymize discussion of class participation may compromise privacy.
    • This is okay: “During the course, I learned how to assess sea-level rise. Using the visualization tool, I realized how many archives on the Gulf Coast, where I lived until I went to college, are in danger.”
    • This is not okay: “A student from Oregon shared that her public library employer lost a collection of community scrapbooks following a wildfire a couple years ago.”

Week Overview

DaySubjectNote
Monday, 8/1Climate Change 101
Tuesday, 8/2Climate Emotions
Wednesday, 8/3Climate Visualization/Mapping  Guest lecture: Itza Carbajal
Thursday, 8/4Short-Term Challenges
Friday, 8/5Long-Term Challenges

Course Expectations

Each day has a set of pre-readings/resources (which are sometimes websites to explore or videos to watch), and preparations. You should ensure all pre-readings and preparations are completed prior to the first meeting of that day (e.g., ensure you have completed Day 3’s pre-readings and preparations no later than Wednesday morning). I highly recommend spending your late afternoon or evening preparing for the next day so you are not scrambling at the last minute to complete any activities.

Pre-Course Requirement

Prior to the first day of the course, you will write a very brief (1-3 paragraphs) environmental and cultural history of wherever you call home to share with everyone as part of the first day introductions. The definition of “home” is up to you – it may be your current place of residence, a place you used to live in but no longer do, a place with which you have ancestral ties, or any other construction that is meaningful to you.

Wherever it is, your home should be a place you can spatially locate on a map of the Earth – it doesn’t need a street address, but it needs some kind of center point (i.e., latitude and longitude). You will be strongly encouraged to make your home’s location the basis of some of our mapping projects later in the week.

A fundamental part of re-orienting ourselves as stewards of the planet is to unlearn harmful ideas of people vs. nature. Many of us operate without much understanding of the environmental history and characteristics of where we live, making climate change seem like a faraway or abstract problem, instead of something already impacting wherever it is that we call home.

Consider trying to answer some of the following questions in your introduction:

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